‘Rick & Morty’ Goes Gumby in Dieter Wagner’s New Stop-Motion Short

One ambitious fan has brought you a brand-new episode of your favorite show. Sure it’s only a minute and a half long, but it’s in stop-motion—and Rick & Morty creator Justin Roiland himself voices the characters.

Animator Dieter Wagner—better known on Reddit as user kungfudork—didn’t expect to get Roiland involved when he started his stop-motion fan video five months ago.

On June 25, he tweeted a preview of his work-in-progress: a photo of the two main characters in clay form.

And after seeing a test clip of Wagner’s stop-motion animation, Roiland (who voices both title characters in the Adult Swim series) was so impressed that he decided to lend his talents to Wagner’s short.

Wagner shares in a comment how the pair collaborated:

“I had done a test with my puppets that he saw and liked,” he writes, “so I just asked if he would want to give me some original audio. A few weeks later he sent it … I still can’t believe it.”

Wagner explains that the stuttering, absurdist dialogue was Roiland’s input as well.

“[H]e improvised [the dialogue],” he writes in a comment. “I did my best to sculpt it into a story.”

And the sculpting was incredibly labor-intensive. Despite having a runtime under 90 seconds, it took Wagner over three months to complete.

“Having to work around my day job, it took about 3.5 months from when Justin sent me audio,” he admits in a comment. “Almost killed me, but I loved every minute of it.”

Dieter Wagner (KungFuDork Studios/YouTube)

At that rate, he estimates it would take him “about 66 months” for a full stop-motion episode, but with Rick & Morty currently on hiatus, perhaps now’s the best time to start working.

KungFuDork Studios/YouTube

In response to the short, redditors are hoping Wagner’s Misadventures will get picked up by Adult Swim—for ad spots or maybe even an original collaboration.